As a result of globally intensifying climate change effects, drought is becoming more prevalent and poses a threat to many areas, especially in water supply, agriculture, transportation, energy, and public health. Therefore, drought should be observed and analyzed regularly and effectively. A new approach has been put forward to make a temporal and spatial drought analysis based on provinces and regions in Turkey within the scope of the present study. In this context, 12-month Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) values ​​were calculated according to precipitation data from 1990–2020 in Turkey and processed spatially in the Geographic Information System (GIS) environment. After the areal sizes of the annual SPI data based on provinces were calculated, drought trends were revealed by applying both Mann–Kendall and innovative trend analysis tests on percentile areas. In the trend analysis of drought areas, five different drought classes were taken into account, and a separate trend analysis was performed for each drought class. Significance levels of 1%, 5%, and 10% were applied in both trend tests. Drought trends at the scale of provinces and regions were evaluated after province-based areal trend maps were produced. According to the results, a decreasing trend was observed in humid categories in the Black Sea and Mediterranean Regions' coastal areas and the provinces located in the inner parts of the Eastern Anatolia Region. An areal change was also detected from relatively more humid or drier classes to near-normal classes. This study's results will positively contribute to long-term drought evaluation and monitoring studies on national and regional scales.

Today, the increase in heating and energy costs has increased the importance of insulation in buildings and new searches are being made for this purpose. As a result of these searches, studies on the production of lightweight concrete have come to the forefront, to improve the insulation properties of concrete. In this study, the usability of hazelnut shells, one of the important agricultural products of Turkey, which are post-harvest waste materials as a lightweight aggregate in concrete, was investigated. To this end, concrete was produced by replacing the aggregate with hazelnut shell by 3%, 6%, 9%, 12% and 15%, and the physical, mechanical and thermal properties of this concrete, were examined. As a result of the study, it was determined that hazelnut shell, which is an agricultural waste, could be used as aggregate in the production of concrete and that lightweight concrete with sufficient strength and durability and improved heat and sound insulation could be produced, provided that the amount of hazelnut shell to be added to the mixture would not be more than 10% of the aggregate.

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